Sarah Palin posted a New Year’s photo of her 6-year-old son Trig standing on the family dog to reach the sink with the offering of an inspirational message of turning an obstacle into a stepping stone, social media erupted in vile attacks against Palin for allowing such an “atrocity” to take place.

Hurls of “you’re a horrible human being,” “sociopaths suck,” and “you’re still a total moron” were aimed directly at Palin. You would have thought they were beating the animal with baseball bats.

Not long ago I was out drinking with a group of friends and we started playing the If-You-Had-To game. The idea is to present players with two people they would never want to sleep with — and then make them choose which they’d sleep with. Here are some of the fiendish alternatives I had to face: Imelda Marcos or Wallace Simpson? Ayn Rand or Yoko Ono? Gertrude Stein or Virginia Woolf?

Then one joker said: Theresa May or Jemima Khan? Everyone laughed at this no-contest choice. Everyone except me. How could I tell them the ugly truth: I’d prefer a night of passion with right-wing Theresa over lefty Jemima any day of the week.

But then I belong to that small, deviant group of liberal-lefty-pro-feminist men who find conservative/right-wing women super sexy. In an age when anything goes — at least in terms of sexual pleasure — ours is a lust that dare not speak its name.

I know this because later that evening, I turned to one of the group and confessed my secret longing for the likes of Theresa May, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin — ideally all at once. I thought my fantasy night of passion would be received with sympathy and understanding. After all, this friend of mine pays a woman in Earls Court to put him on a rack and do things you don’t want to read about. He just looked at me and said: ‘You’re sick!’

Heh..sick for hankering after right wing women?

I can just hear the chorus of left-wing women complaining that, here we go again — judging women in politics by their looks! Well, actually, looks have nothing to do with it. By that criteria, I should be swooning over Jemima instead of drooling over Mrs May. So no, this is not about looks; it’s about the sexiness of a certain mindset and sensibility. What is the appeal of right-wing women to men like me? After all, left-wing men are not supposed to sleep with such women. (We’re meant to find their political convictions too repulsive for that sort of thing.) But politics is rooted in tribalism and dark emotions, as much as reason. To lefty men of my persuasion, right-wing women are the Other; alluring because they are so exotic; exciting because they’re so forbidden.

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next. Read more »

He might be an ignorant chump at times, but Trump doesn’t always get it wrong. Last month he mocked fired journalist Martin Bashir over his comments about Sarah Palin, but this month he’s been giving the fruit loops stranded in ice a good shellacking on Twitter.

In 1990, when Mrs. Thatcher was evicted from office by her ingrate party’s act of matricide, the difference she’d made was such that in all the political panel discussions on TV that evening no producer thought to invite any union leaders. No one knew their names anymore.

Margaret Thatcher, almost alone, refused to accept the inevitability of decline. She was determined to turn the country around, and she succeeded. Inflation fell, strikes stopped, the latent enterprise of a free people was awakened. Having lagged behind for a generation, we outgrew every European country in the 1980s except Spain (which was bouncing back from an even lower place). As revenues flowed in, taxes were cut and debt was repaid, while public spending – contrary to almost universal belief – rose.

History will enshrine Margaret Thatcher as a transformational leader who helped defeat communism, promote freedom, and bring hope to the oppressed. Her penetrating words and compelling vision will last for generations. Read more »

It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh’s show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you’re a rank-and-file conservative, you’re probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn’t accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thing; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear.

But guess what?

You haven’t just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven’t tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they’ve done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.

Why do you keep putting up with it?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because Romney supporters like Jennifer Rubin and Hugh Hewitt saw it as their duty to spin constantly for their favored candidate rather than being frank about his strengths and weaknesses. What conservative Washington Post readers got, when they traded in Dave Weigel for Rubin, was a lot more hackery and a lot less informed about the presidential election.

Conservatives were at an information disadvantage because so many right-leaning outlets wasted time on stories the rest of America dismissed as nonsense. WorldNetDaily brought you birtherism. Forbes brought you Kenyan anti-colonialism. National Review obsessed about an imaginary rejection of American exceptionalism, misrepresenting an Obama quote in the process, and Andy McCarthy was interviewed widely about his theory that Obama, aka the Drone Warrior in Chief, allied himself with our Islamist enemies in a “Grand Jihad” against America. Seriously?

Conservatives were at a disadvantage because their information elites pandered in the most cynical, self-defeating ways, treating would-be candidates like Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as if they were plausible presidents rather than national jokes who’d lose worse than George McGovern.

Mitt Romeny is standing for President of the United States. That position is often described as leader of the free world, but his efforts in london suggest he might just be a tool. Not only is he tone deaf, but he said some silly things and did dumb things like on take questions from pommy reporters.

One of those pommy reporters hashtagged it #romneyshambles:

Serious dismay in Whitehall at Romney debut. ‘Worse than Sarah Palin.’ ‘Total car crash’. Two of the kinder verdicts #romneyshambles

“It’s hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting,” he told NBC’s Brian Williams. “The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.” The British press was unamused. The Telegraph’s website screamed: “Olympics: David Cameron rejects Mitt Romney’s suggestion Britain is not ready,” while The Times of London headlined the story “PM rebuffs Romney over readiness for Olympics.”

Cameron himself told reporters: “This is a time of some economic difficulty for the UK, but look at what we are capable of achieving as a nation even at a difficult economic time,” he said. “I think we will show the whole world not just that we come together as a United Kingdom but also we’re extremely good at welcoming people from across the world.”

I’ve called Romney “gaffe-tastic” before, but I found myself shocked by his tone-deaf, condescending remarks in London. I mean, we expect it in this country. Romney’s Olympics gaffe made me think about when, campaigning in Pittsburgh, the candidate insulted a local bakery by disdaining its baked goods. “I’m not sure about these cookies. They don’t look like you made them,” Romney said to the woman next to him. “No, no. They came from the local 7/11 bakery, or whatever.” In fact they came from the local Bethel Bakery, whose owner later told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell he was offended by Romney’s remarks.

The former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008 has been sending signals that she would not run and she confirmed it in a letter sent to supporters, saying “my family comes first”.

“After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for president of the United States,” she said.